


The Texture of Hope

by eClair23



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 03:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18490513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eClair23/pseuds/eClair23
Summary: The story of how hope changed Clint and Natasha.





	The Texture of Hope

What is hope, you ask? 

If you ask her, hope is rough and built up over years of hard work, like the callouses that harden his hands. It’s in the tender way he brushes her hair out of her face with his fingers. It’s the way he brushes her shoulder with his own when they walk side by side. She feels it every time his thumb ghosts her cheek as he kisses her. It’s the way she affectionately ruffles his hair as she prepares breakfast in the morning while he sips his black coffee. Hope is the way she can’t hold back a smile sometimes when he kisses her. Hope is the way she sings when she thinks no one is watching, beautiful Russian lullabies from the life she gave up long ago. They no longer carry the weight they used to. Now, they’re just songs; not reminders of everything she’s lost, everything that has been taken from her. Just music.

Hope is the way he sat by her bed for nights on end early on, holding her wrist so she could sleep without handcuffing herself to the bed. Hope is his quiet but solid presence by her side when she needs him the most. It’s the way his jaw clenched as she told him she couldn’t have kids. It’s how he silently sought her hand out and just held on, offering support as best he could. It’s the way she entrusted him with her tears and her worst nightmares, and he kept them. It’s the way he’s learned how to tell she’s upset without her saying a word. He goes out for Chinese and they eat in silence back home, unless she wants to talk about it. But he doesn’t push her. Hope is the way Clint has always refused to see her as just her body, the way he’s never once touched her without asking or making sure it’s okay. It’s the way she trusted him with her past and he vowed that her future would be different.

If you ask him, hope smells like the floral perfume she likes to wear when they’re at home, or when she has a day off to just relax. It’s not the seductive perfume she wears on missions; this one is light, breezy, and innocent. Clint prefers this one, too. He revels in the way it tickles his nose because it’s the scent of Natasha being truly happy, being herself. Those two things haven’t always been able to coexist so peacefully. He knows, he’s seen her struggle to love herself. So he breathes it in deep every chance he gets, until his lungs feel like they might burst (and, if he’s honest, he wouldn’t be sorry if they did). Hope is the gentle squeeze she gives his hand when he seeks hers out, offering her strength. It’s the way she unabashedly buries her face in his chest after a long and hard mission that leaves them both emotionally drained. He feels it every time he wakes up by her side, every morning he rolls over and sees her sleeping next to him, trusting him at her most vulnerable.

Hope is the way she learned sign language, without him even asking, so they could communicate all the time. He’d vented about his frustration with his stupid hearing aids being unreliable, and she had listened. Afterwards, she’d studied quietly and surprised him one day by signing to him, telling him she could speak his language now. He had forgotten all about the whole conversation, but she never had. He’d never felt so loved in his life, and he told her so. She brushed it off, shaking her head: “This is how you talk; of course I learned.”

For both of them, hope was the way his voice sounded the day he asked her to marry him, vulnerable and soft as he clumsily dropped to one knee. Hope was the way her eyes sparkled with joyful tears as she dropped to her knees, threw her arms around his neck, and murmured, “yes” against his shoulder.

For the team, hope is the cadence of both of their voices saying, “I do” on their wedding day three years ago today in front of friends and coworkers. Hope looks like the way they hold on to each other at all times, never letting go. If not physically attached, emotionally intertwined.

Anyone who looks at them sees the hope they radiate. Just passing them on the street, they carry a tangible weight of joy. Anyone seeing either of them ten years ago would have seen someone with dull, lifeless eyes devoid of hope. But now, anyone looking at them from the outside would never guess the horrors they have seen and endured. Because hope has changed them. It’s grated at their rough edges like sandpaper and smoothed them into shining images of what they’ve always been.


End file.
